SHIFTING PATTERNS:

The importance of guaranteed hours contracts

Elisabeth Clark, Chief Executive of Avanti Homecare, explains the importance of guaranteed hours contracts for her workforce and business.

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Within the industry, we have known for some time we have been facing a recruitment crisis in social care. Finally, in the last few months, the issue has attracted media attention. The support we offer to millions of people and the impact on the NHS when we cannot support as many people as need us is now well known nationally.

When the recruitment crisis is analysed, the issue of the poor levels of pay that can be supported by fees offered by local authorities or the NHS is often cited as the issue. Whilst this certainly is one of the key concerns, another area that often gets overlooked is the working patterns and contracts that our carers are working under. This is particularly important in the almost full employment market we have in the UK at the moment. Workers have more options than ever before and can choose to be selective on both pay and terms and conditions.

Understanding risk

One of the more problematic areas of how we, as an industry, employ our carers is the widespread use of zero hours contracts. If you take a look at contracting arrangements between commissioners and providers, it is easy to understand how these have become prevalent.

Generally, providers are only paid for the hours that they provide care (actually or scheduled) within a person’s home. That payment typically stops in any period when care is not needed; this could be for hospital admission, cancelled calls, respite care, holidays, etc. It is not easy to fill that time with other work for a short period and there is an expectation that the time is available when the client returns home. This is a risk to providers’ income, and many match that risk to a reduction in outgoings by reducing staff pay during these times, effectively passing that risk down to their workers.

We also have the issue of when care is needed during the day and how we fill our care teams’ time across the day. A large number of people will want help in the morning and evening, but often the rest of the day is less needed. That means we have high staff need in blocks across the day but with periods of much lower need.

Zero hour contracts completely de-risk this set-up for providers and current commissioning arrangements de-risk this for procurers, but that means the risk is pushed to individual care workers who may not know from one week to another how much they are going to get paid.

It is little wonder that, when faced with this, even our most dedicated, experienced workers are moving to employment for similar pay in supermarkets or warehouses, where they at least have certainty of how much they will be paid each week. Could any of us survive, particularly with the cost-of-living crisis we are facing, without that certainty?

Thinking differently

When we started Avanti Homecare in 2018, one thing that was very important to us was to ensure we provided proper guaranteed hours contracts. We don’t offer any zero hours contracts and our full-timers are guaranteed 30 contract hours each week.

When we were thinking about this initially, our view was that there is not a lack of work and so we should not expect our team of professionals to take the risk of finding that work or structuring that work to ensure their time was fully utilised.

I think our backgrounds allowed us to take a different approach to the issue. I spent many weeks analysing the commissioning structures, how rotas and work patterns would need to be fixed and what risks we were taking on. We understood we were taking on a larger risk profile that other options would offer but fundamentally believed it was the right thing to do.

The reality of running our business on this basis has certainly been more difficult than had we operated under a less carer-focused approach.

It was not the approach our management team was used to; they had to understand why we were running in a different way and sometimes got frustrated that they could not offer staff or clients the types of flexibility they had been able to in other businesses.

We have had to be firm with our clients and commissioners about the types of packages we can take on – one morning call each day will not allow us to provide our team with enough work to fill their day. We will only take on work where we are needed at least three times each day, or if fewer calls are needed then our morning call will have to be outside of peak times.

We have also had to work on the structure of our shift pattern offering for our teams. We cannot offer the complete flexibility that a zero hour contract employer can. Our teams can either work on an early, late or full-time shift pattern. That has meant we have not been able to take on some applicants who wanted much more flexibility.

We have also had to take on financial costs; in times where we have not fully filled our carers’ time, we have to top up their pay to match our guarantees. This is something that happens less and less as we have grown in our experience, but with the lack of money in the sector it could be an issue.

Stability matters

The counter to all this is that our amazing team of care workers is not exposed to the concerns of how much work, and ultimately pay, they will receive each week. We do not lose members of staff to other providers or industries on the basis of them not getting enough stable work.

We also find that we gain members of staff from other providers who do not offer this certainty. It is often cited by team members who are already working in the industry as the reason they are leaving their current provider and want to join us.

Our management team also benefits from this system, our rotas are stable and we do not have days where we have more care than carers who can help. Of course there are still days where sickness means things are busier than any of us would like, but generally we have a calm, organised week which allows our management team to focus on their clients rather than the rota.

Finally, we have also found having this system in place crucial to support our newest move into international recruitment. We have added a number of brilliant carers to our team from overseas in recent months and plan to continue with this. The visa rules mean we need to be confident we can provide 39 hours of work each week to these new team members. Our structured approach has allowed this to be easily provided, but I can see it being a blocker for others who do not have this in place.

Links with procurement

We have spent a lot of time on our work structure, but I think it is something that could be replicated across the industry if procuring bodies gave closer thought to how their choices impact on how providers can offer staff contracts.

I have had discussions with commissioners who are looking to push their providers towards a model more like ours, but when I discuss some of the things we have in place that allow us to do it (minimum number of calls, retainer payments when clients are unexpectedly admitted to hospital, notice periods for cancelling care), the interest seems to lessen.

As an industry, I believe we need to work together on these things so that the balance of risk is spread between those best placed to control it, and away from our care workers.

Moving forward we would love to go even further; if we are looking for parity between our NHS and social care workforce then we should work towards fully paid shifts, from the start to the end of the working day (as a district nurse would). This is something we are investigating and hope to be able to put in place soon. CMM

Alan Lewis, Employment Partner at Constantine Law, outlines the law relating to Zero hours contracts and Guaranteed Minimum (GM) hours contracts.

Status: Employees working under either type of contract are often regarded as casual workers. But this should be treated with caution because when considering employment status, an employment tribunal is concerned with the true relationship between the parties and not just the written terms which means that individuals under either type of contract can be found to be employees (who have more legal rights than workers).

Worker status: Rights they have: To be paid at least the National Minimum Wage; to have rest breaks; to a weekly working maximum of 48 hours on average; to claim Statutory Sick Pay if they are paying Class one National Insurance Contributions; protection from detriment or dismissal for whistleblowing; and to not be treated less favourably if they work part time.

Worker status: rights they do not have: Minimum notice periods to end their employment; protection against unfair dismissal; the right to request flexible working; time off for emergencies; and started to redundancy pay.

Flexibility with both: Whether Zero hours or a GM hours contract, it can be drafted in different ways: being expected to be available for work when it is offered; being obliged to accept work when offered (offers more certainty for the care business); and being under no obligation to accept work (more difficult for the business to plan shifts).

Useful guidance for employers about Zero hours contracts: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/zero-hours-contractsguidance-for-employers/zero-hours-contracts-guidance-for-employers